'Kay, so I'm just going to come out and admit it: I've never wanted to watch Forrest Gump. I mean, who hasn't heard of Forrest Gump, right? Do I really want to watch it and actually be forced to think and use my brain?
So normally, when I come across Forrest Gump, my first thought is to look for other things, which is how I watched Wild Child and Emily in Paris. Not my greatest choices.
But today, I sat myself down, and it might be because I only got 5 hours of sleep last night but I decided to watch Forrest Gump. Who knows, I needed inspiration to stay awake and I was kind of curious about all the hype. What could be so awesome about "a box of chocolates" that so many people adore it? Let's find out.
So I did, and God I'm so glad I watched this film.
The film tells the story of Forrest Gump, the titular character, who has below a below average IQ and a heart of gold. He's sweet, kind, loyal, and above all of that, innocent. He is innocently integral or witness to some of the largest events in American history, and he is the recipient of awards and honors that most people can only dream of, yet all he has to say about that is "Mama said there's only so much fortune a man really needs. The rest is just showing off."
The film is funny. It's sincerely funny in a way people don't expect going into it. Scenes like the one where we have Bubba and Forrest just being themselves are hilarious. We're not laughing at Forrest, per se, but we are laughing at his innocence, and then we feel terrible for laughing, because we only laugh because we are no longer innocent. I love the sort of conflicting and confronting ideas that this film represents, and the humor in it is exemplary of that. Of course, there are just scenes that are funny solely because they are funny, and those scenes were a pleasant surprise as well.
It's also not just funny. It's heartwarming. It's heart-melting, whatever that means. Forrest's innocence lends itself to the most remarkable scenes of love, whether that's him sitting down next to Forrest Jr. or it's him running into the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool just because Jenny is running at him. Or it's when he names his boat Jenny, because he can think of no other name that is nearly as beautiful. And it's not just Forrest who is heartwarming. It's also the people around him. He's fortunate in that everyone he meets is somehow kind to him, and even when they aren't in the beginning, they become kind after they get to know him. It's impossible not to be drawn to the sweetness of Forrest's ignorance, as Lt. Dan learns. The scene when he throws out the two girls for calling Forrest "stupid" on New Year's Eve lives in my mind because of the way that Dan is so broken and in so much pain and he hates Forrest in his perverted way yet he is still willing to defend him against the world.
And his mom? God, I adore his mom. She's biased and different in her own way, but the way she stands up for her son, tells him that he is unique the way everyone is and that no one should ever be allowed to tell him he's stupid or dumb is so touching to me. And she does do everything she can for her son, and although we see the stories through the prism of Forrest's eyes, we know that he loves her and we as the audience knows how much she loves him and how much she is willing to give up for him.
But Forrest Gump isn't just a feel-good movie. It's not. It wouldn't be so potent and influential even today, nearly three decades after it came out, if it were.
The biggest surprise to me about Forrest Gump is that it is also a tragedy.
Forrest is so naïve and innocent that many of what he has been through seems simple and easy to him, but to the audience, we see more. We see, for instance, that Jenny hadn't achieved her dream of being a singer, because she was on a stage where no one was really listening to her sing. They just wanted to see her naked. She got kicked out of college because she was on a Playboy magazine, and there is no certainty to this belief, but I think she was also sexually harassed by her father and abused in other ways. She didn't have an easy life, and she really was messed up, as she says to Forrest. But Forrest didn't understand that. All he wanted to know was why she couldn't be with him and why she kept leaving him.
I was conflicted about Jenny's character, and I don't know if that's because I saw the Chinese cut of the film or if it's because of something else, but I never understood why she left him after going back to him. I thought there was a chance that she had AIDS, which is why she didn't want to marry him, but then I found out that the director had intended for her to have another disease that wasn't HIV, and so I didn't understand why she left him after having sex with him.
But towards the end, I understood a bit better. Because Jenny has always been conflicted. She wasn't the female heroine who stepped up for the kid, she was the girl who stood to the sidelines and screamed "Run, Forrest, run!" She is encouraging and she is loving to him, but to her, he was never a love interest. Then she sleeps with him, and things perhaps change for her. She's no longer sure why she's running away from the person who loves her, and is always there for her, and is actually sweet and loving with her. She's no longer sure why she keeps turning to people who are abusive and why she keeps hurting herself. And she's scared.
So what does she do?
She does what she's been taught to do, what she's always told Forrest to do. She runs. And leaves Forrest behind with a grief that he can't quite make sense of, so he runs, too. Only he runs in a literal way, and she leaves him behind in a metaphorical way. In a way, that's why I think they were meant to be together. Forrest isn't as smart as Jenny, but moments like the moment when he turns to Jenny and whispers, "is he-" about Forrest Jr. and the way his face bunches up and his eyes tear up even though we never see Forrest cry, never before this, tells the audience that having a lower IQ doesn't entail feelings that run any shallower.
That moment also illustrates why I think Forrest Gump is a tragedy.
It's so obvious in that moment, that Forrest knows he's different. He knows he's slow and he knows everyone else knows that, because people have been screaming it to him for his whole life. And sometimes people think he doesn't have feelings and use him as an emotional punching bag the way Lt. Dan does, but he does, and those feelings run as deep as they would for anyone. In a way, the audience sees the world through his lens, but through the brief moments when he isn't telling the story, the audience gets to see the world's impact on Forrest, and that too is heartbreaking.
Forrest cries twice in the film. Once, when Jenny tells him that he has a child. Then, when Jenny dies. Its poetic that the man who runs fast enough to get into college and graduate and outrun guns and bullets in a forest in Vietnam can't run fast enough to catch the love of his life, nor get her to stay with him after he finally catches her. No one outruns death, and no one can catch a heart that doesn't want to stay. Forrest Gump's story is a tragedy because he spends his whole life chasing after that angelic voice that told him "You can sit here if you life." And just as he finally got it, it left him, this time for good.
It's also a tragedy because of what it exposes in us. Forrest is the unwilling narrator to some of the worst incidents of violence and corruption in America. The Watergate incident, multiple assassination attempts on presidents, some successful some not, the Vietnam war. He sees them through eyes that are free of prejudice and free of political parties, and so do we, through his eyes. And it really demonstrates how ridiculous we can be sometimes. He ran for nothing, yet somehow all of us had to tie some significance to things always (in fact, that's what I'm doing, right now. Ironic, much?), and he does things just for doing them, and somehow, things always turn out all right.
But what about us?
So many things limit us, and therein lies the tragedy of Forrest Gump to a more practical level. He has a lower IQ than the average person, yet he is uninhibited and free. He does what he wants to do, because he wants to do them. He doesn't consider anything else beyond a simple, "I try to be a man of my word."
He teaches us all something, sitting there on the bench with a suitcase full of his favorite things and a silly smile on his face waiting to go see the love of his life. He teaches us that life really is a box of chocolates, and that you never know what you are going to get. But he also teaches us that life is like a box of chocolates, and you never know what you will get until you try it.
Who would've thought I would enjoy this film, huh? But I'm glad I watched it. And I'm glad I watched it today, because Independence day is today and I am not feeling particularly independent with all the restrictions tied to my reproductive organs. Just want to put that out there.
Happy Monday!!
(I will not say happy 4th of July, and I hope SCOTUS is ashamed of themselves.)
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